One to One with Bill Goodman:
Renfro Valley
premiered May 18, 2008
Kentucky music, past and present, is the topic for this edition of One to One as host Bill Goodman welcomes two guests from the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center and its Kentucky Music Hall of Fame.
In the first interview, Robert Lawson, executive director of the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Renfro Valley, discusses Kentucky’s diverse musical history and the origins and purposes of the Hall of Fame.
Opened in spring 2002, the Rockcastle County museum honors “Kentucky performers, songwriters, publishers, promoters, managers, broadcasters, comedians, and other music professionals who have made significant contributions to the music industry in Kentucky and around the world.” In addition to exhibits about the inductees, the museum offers a historical timeline, a map spotlighting the Kentucky hometowns of many other past and contemporary performers, galleries for rotating exhibits, and an instrument room and sound booth where visitors can try making some music themselves.
In the second interview, Connie Hunt, CEO and general manager of the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center, talks about the center’s long history and previews the 2008/09 season of live concerts and radio broadcasts.
John Lair, a native of the town of Renfro Valley who went on to become a radio programmer and folk music collector, founded the Renfro Valley country music center in 1937. A traditionalist, Lair was concerned about the Depression-era drift of country music toward the Western influence of cowboy and swing performers like Gene Autry and Bob Wills. He established the famous Renfro Valley Barn Dance, broadcast nationwide on radio, to showcase a more authentic form of country music. Five years after his death in 1985, his heirs sold the Renfro Valley complex to a new partnership of local businessmen. During the 1990s, that group revived the center with new construction, big-name shows, new family attractions, and a television show.
Related Resource:
- Program 921 of KET’s Kentucky Life includes a visit to the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
